Showing posts with label Mae West. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Mae West

Mae West could be seen as similar to Peggy Hopkins Joyce, or to Thelma Todd for that matter.

Mae West's first movie was NIGHT AFTER NIGHT ( 1932 ) starring George Raft.

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_After_Night_(film)

A

Friday, July 24, 2015

Cary Grant And Mae West

Cary Grant and Mae West in I'M NO ANGEL ( 1933 ). Mae West claimed to have discovered Cary Grant, but he had been in a number of movies before working with her.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

THIS IS THE NIGHT

THIS IS THE NIGHT was Cary Grant's first feature film.

This Is the Night (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This Is the Night
Theatrical poster with Lilli Damita and Cary Grant
Directed by	Frank Tuttle
Produced by	Benjamin Glazer (uncredited)
Written by	Benjamin Glazer George Marion Jr. play Naughty Cinderella Avery Hopwood play Pouche Henry Falk René Peter
Starring	Lili Damita Charles Ruggles Roland Young Thelma Todd Cary Grant
Music by	Ralph Rainger W. Franke Harling (uncredited) John Leipold (uncredited)
Cinematography	Victor Milner
Production company	Paramount Pictures
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	April 8, 1932 (1932-04-08)
Running time	80 min
Country	United States
Language	English

This Is the Night is a 1932 comedy film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Frank Tuttle, and starring Lili Damita, Charles Ruggles, Roland Young, Thelma Todd, and Cary Grant.
The picture is based on the 1923 play Pouche by Henri Falk and René Peter, and the 1925 English-language adaptation Naughty Cinderella written by Avery Hopwood. The plays had already been adapted for film once before as Good and Naughty (1926) with Pola Negri.
Night scenes in this film were intended to be seen in blue tint. Tinting is used on the restored 2011 DVD version released by Turner Classic Movies. However, tinting was absent from recent prints prior to restoration. The version shown on the TCM cable channel in the 1990s was not tinted.
This is the Night is Cary Grant's feature film debut. He disliked his role, believing that a man accepting the unfaithfulness of his wife so calmly was unbelievable. After seeing the film, he decided to quit the movie industry; his friend Orry-Kelly talked him out of it.^[1]

Plot

When Claire Mathewson's (Thelma Todd) husband Stephen (Cary Grant) comes back unexpectedly from the 1932 Summer Olympics, where he was supposed to compete in the javelin throw, he discovers the train tickets for a romantic Venice getaway she has planned with her lover Gerald (Roland Young). Gerald's friend Bunny (Charles Ruggles) lies and says that the tickets are actually for Gerald and his wife. With Stephen still suspicious, Gerald must find a fake wife to go to Venice with him. He tries to hire the actress Chou-Chou (Claire Dodd), but since her boyfriend is a jealous man, she gives the job to out-of-work Germaine (Lili Damita), who needs the 2000 franc fee to keep from starving. At first, Gerald thinks she is too demure, but she soon convinces him that she can pretend to be a glamorous wife.
The two couples go to Venice. Bunny, attracted to Germaine, decides to join them. On the train, Stephen questions Gerald and Germaine about how they met. When they arrive in Venice, Claire quickly becomes jealous, as both Stephen and Gerald seem fascinated by Germaine. Claire eventually demands that Gerald send Germaine away immediately, so he orders her to leave the next day. Meanwhile, a drunken Bunny climbs a ladder into Germaine's bedroom and offers to take her away. After she turns down his offer, he falls into a canal on his way out and is apprehended by two policemen. Stephen believes he hears a burglar and goes to her room to investigate. The two are then caught in a seemingly compromising position by Gerald and Claire. However, Bunny reappears and explains what really happened. Her love for her husband rekindled, Claire breaks off her affair with Gerald. Germaine reveals to Gerald that she is not in fact Chou-Chou and decides to return to Paris, but Gerald catches up to her in a gondola and asks her to marry him.

Cast

Lili Damita as Germaine
Charles Ruggles as Bunny West
Roland Young as Gerald Grey
Thelma Todd as Claire
Cary Grant as Stephen
Irving Bacon as Sparks, Gerald's chauffeur. In a running gag, he accidentally snags Claire's dress repeatedly, for example in a limousine door or luggage, causing her to lose her clothing.
Davison Clark as Studio Official (uncredited)
Gino Corrado as Manager of Neapolitan Hotel (uncredited)
Claire Dodd as Chou-Chou (uncredited)
Alex Melesh as Porter (uncredited)
Donald Novis as Singing Gondolier (uncredited)
Tiny Sandford as Porter (uncredited)
Rolfe Sedan as Boulevardier (uncredited)
Harry Semels as Man in the Manhole (uncredited)

References

Jump up ^ Eliot, Marc (2005). Cary Grant: A Biography. Random House. pp. 63–4. ISBN 0-307-20983-0.

External links[edit]

This Is the Night at the Internet Movie Database
This Is the Night at the TCM Movie Database
This Is the Night at AllMovie
This Is the Night at the British Film Institute's Film and TV Database

* * *

The films of Ernst Lubitsch were popular in this period, and this movie was supposed to be like the ones that he made. I didn't like his movies and I didn't care much for this one either.

Thelma Todd's losing her dress in a car door was something that Jean Harlow had done in Laurel and Hardy's DOUBLE WHOOPEE ( 1929 ). They would have been seen as the same type during this period, although Jean Harlow was the more popular.

What makes this more important than it might otherwise be is that it was Cary Grant's first feature film. But evidently nobody paid much attention to him till he worked with Mae West, leading to her claim that she had "discovered" him. By that time he had also worked with Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich at the same studio.

Lili Damita was popular at the time; later she married Errol Flynn, who got to be more popular than she was. That's probably what she's best known for today.

Roland Young seems to have been associated with Thelma Todd off as well as on screen. He was credited with having invented a "Thelma Todd Cocktail" that was served at the Sidewalk Café. Young would go on to play Topper in a series of movies for Hal Roach. Cary Grant was in the first one.

THIS IS THE NIGHT was Cary Grant's first feature film, although Mae West later claimed to have discovered him.

A running gag in this film has Thelma Todd repeatedly losing her skirt.

Lily Damita:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Damita

Claire Dodd:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Dodd

DOUBLE WHOOPEE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Whoopee

Cary Grant:
http://www.carygrant.net/

Thelma Todd Cocktail:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-from-motion-picture.html

THIS IS THE NIGHT:
http://moviemagg.blogspot.com/2011/05/this-is-night-paramount-1932.html

http://www.carygrant.net/reviews/thisnight.html

Watch THIS IS THE NIGHT:
http://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2015/06/watch-this-is-night.html

TOPPER:
http://www.carygrant.net/reviews/topper.html

Roland Young:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Young

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Happy Halloween

From Mae West

Friday, October 25, 2013

George Raft

It was George Raft that got Mae West into the movies. And like her, he also had links to the mob.

George Raft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Raft
From the trailer for Invisible Stripes (1939)
Born	George Ranft (1901-09-26)September 26, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	November 24, 1980(1980-11-24) (aged 79) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1929–1978
Spouse(s)	Grace Mulrooney (1923-1970; her death)

George Raft (born George Ranft; September 26, 1901 – November 24, 1980) was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. A stylish leading man in dozens of movies, today George Raft is mostly known for his gangster roles in the original Scarface (1932), Each Dawn I Die (1939), and Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot, as a dancer in Bolero (1934), and a truck driver in They Drive by Night (1940). Raft's real-life association with New York gangsters gave his screen image in mob films an added realism.

Early life

Raft was born on September 26, 1901^[1] in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, the son of Eva (Glockner) and Conrad Ranft. His father was born in Massachusetts to German immigrant parents, and his mother was a German immigrant.^{[citation needed]} His parents were married on November 17, 1895 in Manhattan (1900 census records give the year of marriage as 1896, and years married as four). His sister, Eva, known as "Katie," was born on April 18, 1896. Although Raft's birth year in obituaries has been reported as 1895, the 1900 Census for New York City lists his elder sister, Katie, as his parents' only child, with two children born and only one living.^[2] On the 1910 Census, he is listed as being eight years old, and his birth record can be found in the New York City birth index as being 1901.^[1]^[3] A boyhood friend of gangster Owney Madden (and later a "wheel man" for the mob), Raft admitted narrowly avoiding a life of crime.^[4] Raft spoke German fluently, having learned the language from his parents.

Dancer

As a young man Raft showed aptitude in dancing which, with his elegant fashion sense, enabled him to earn work as a dancer in New York City nightclubs, often in the same venues as Rudolph Valentino before Valentino became a movie actor. Raft became part of the stage act of flamboyant speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan, and his success led him to Broadway where he again worked as a dancer. He later made a semi-autobiographical film called Broadway (1942) about this period in which he plays himself. He also worked in London as a chorus boy in the early 1920s.^{[citation needed]} Fred Astaire, in his autobiography Steps in Time (1959), says Raft was a lightning-fast dancer and did "the fastest Charleston I ever saw."^[5]
Vi Kearney, later a dancer in shows for Charles B. Cochran and André Charlot, was quoted as saying:

Oh yes, I knew him (George Raft). We were in a big show together. Sometimes, to eke out our miserable pay, we'd do a dance act after the show at a club and we'd have to walk back home because all the buses had stopped for the night by that time. He'd tell me how he was going to be a big star one day and once he said that when he'd made it how he'd make sure to arrange a Hollywood contract for me. I just laughed and said: 'Come on, Georgie, stop dreaming. We're both in the chorus and you know it.' [Did he arrange the contract?] Yes. But by that time I'd decided to marry... [Was he (Raft) ever your boyfriend?] How many times do I have to tell you ...chorus girls don't go out with chorus boys.^{[citation needed]}

Gangster icon

In 1929, Raft relocated to Hollywood and took small roles. In Taxi! (1932) with James Cagney and Loretta Young, Raft has a colorful unbilled dancing role as Cagney's competitor in a dance contest who wins only to be knocked down by Cagney's loonily pugnacious character. His big break came later that same year as the nickel-flipping second lead alongside Paul Muni's raging killer in Scarface (1932), and Raft's convincing portrayal led to speculation that Raft was a gangster. Due to his lifelong friendship with Owney Madden, Raft was a friend or acquaintance of several other crime figures, including Bugsy Siegel and Siegel's old friend Meyer Lansky. Raft and boxer-turned actor/comedian "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom were lifelong friends as well - in fact, Raft was Maxie's mentor from childhood. When Gary Cooper's romantic escapades put him on one gangster's hit list, Raft reportedly interceded and persuaded the mobster to spare Cooper.^[6]^[7] Orson Welles explained to Peter Bogdanovich in their interview book This is Orson Welles that, as Raft's career accelerated, the actor was particularly an idol and role model for actual gangsters of the period in terms of dress and attitude.

Wm. Holden and Raft in Invisible Stripes

He was one of the three most popular gangster actors of the 1930s, with James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson; Raft ranked far above Humphrey Bogart in fame and boxoffice clout throughout the decade. When the studio refused to hire Texas Guinan, the performer upon whom one of the movie's characters was based, because of her age, Raft advocated for the casting of his friend, Mae West, in a supporting role in his first film as leading man, Night After Night (1932), which launched her movie career.^[8] Raft appeared the following year in Raoul Walsh's energetic period piece The Bowery as Steve Brodie, supposedly the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and survive, with Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Fay Wray and Pert Kelton. Raft memorably dances into the picture in his opening scene wearing a derby.
Some of his other movies include If I Had A Million (1932; an episodic ensemble film in which he plays a forger hiding from police, suddenly given a million dollars with no place to cash the check), Bolero (1934; in a rare role as a dancer rather than a gangster), Limehouse Blues (1934; with Anna May Wong), a brutal and fast-paced adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1935; remade in 1942 with Alan Ladd in Raft's role as a result of the success of the remake of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon), Souls at Sea (1937; with Gary Cooper), Spawn of the North (1938; with Raft garnering top billing over Henry Fonda and John Barrymore), two with Humphrey Bogart: Invisible Stripes (1939) and They Drive by Night (1940), with Bogart in supporting roles, Each Dawn I Die (1939; with James Cagney and Raft as convicts in prison), and Manpower (1941; with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich). Although Raft received third billing in Manpower, he played the lead.

Unexpected career decline

The years 1940 and 1941 proved to be Raft's career peak. He went into a gradual professional decline over the next decade, in part due to allegedly turning down some of the most-famous roles in movie history. Raoul Walsh's High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon transformed Humphrey Bogart from supporting player to a major force in Hollywood in 1941. Raft chose Raoul Walsh's Manpower over The Maltese Falcon because the Falcon's director, John Huston, had never directed before and a racier pre-Code version of the film already existed. Raft was also reported to have turned down Bogart's role in Casablanca (1942), although according to some Warner Bros. memos, this story is apocryphal.^[9]
Following the release of the espionage thriller Background to Danger (1943), a film intended to capitalize on the success of Casablanca, Raft demanded termination of his Warner Brothers contract. Jack Warner was prepared to pay Raft a $10,000 settlement, but the actor either misunderstood or was so eager to be free of the studio that it was he who gave Warner a check in that amount.^{[citation needed]} Raft is widely believed to have been functionally illiterate, which could account for the confusion.

Judy Canova and George Raft pictured in 1979

Raft's career as a leading man continued through the 1940s with films of gradually declining quality, spiraling steadily downward until his name was finally limited as a box office draw.
During the 1950s he was reduced to working as a greeter at the Capri Casino in Mob dominated Havana, Cuba, where he was a part owner.^[10] In 1953, Raft also starred as Lt. George Kirby in a syndicated television series police drama titled I'm the Law, which ran for one season and was one of the earliest instances of a movie star of his previous calibre accepting the lead in a TV series. He wound up occasionally accepting supporting roles in movies, such as playing second fiddle to Robert Taylor in Rogue Cop (1954).
Raft satirized his gangster image with a well-received supporting performance in Some Like it Hot (1959), but this did not lead to a comeback, and he spent the remainder of the decade making films in Europe. He played a small role as a casino owner in Ocean's 11 (1960) opposite the Rat Pack. He was an American-speaking syndicate leader alongside the French iconic actor, Jean Gabin in the 1966 French gangster movie, Du rififi à Paname. He also had cameos in 1967's James Bond spoof Casino Royale and a 'rock group as spies' farce The Phynx. His final film appearances were in Sextette (1978), reunited with Mae West in a cameo, and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980), a nod to 1940's detective movies.
Ray Danton played Raft in The George Raft Story (1961), which co-starred Jayne Mansfield. Raft himself excoriated the movie upon its release due to inaccuracies.
In the 1991 biographical movie Bugsy, the character of George Raft was played by Joe Mantegna.
Raft has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for contributions to Motion Pictures at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard, and for Television at 1500 Vine St.

Personal life

Raft married Grayce Mulrooney, several years his senior, in 1923, long before his stardom. The pair separated soon thereafter, but the devoutly Catholic Mulrooney refused to grant a divorce, Raft remained married to and supporting her until her death in 1970. A romantic figure in Hollywood, Raft had love affairs with Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West. He stated publicly that he wanted to marry Norma Shearer, with whom he had a long romance, but his wife's refusal to allow a divorce eventually caused Shearer to end the affair.^[4]^[11]
When James Cagney became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1942 for a two-year term, he took a role in the Guild's fight against the Mafia, which had taken an active interest in the movie industry. Cagney's wife, Billie, once received a phone call telling her that Cagney was dead.^[12] Cagney alleged that, having failed to scare him and the Guild off, they sent a hit man to kill him by dropping a heavy light onto his head. On hearing about the rumor of the hit, George Raft made a call, and the hit was supposedly cancelled.^[13]^[14]
In 1967 he was denied entry into the United Kingdom (where he had been installed as Casino Director at a casino known as the "Colony Club") due to his underworld associations.^[15]

Death

Raft died from leukemia at age of 79 in Los Angeles, California, on November 24, 1980. Two days earlier, Mae West had died and their bodies were at one point alongside each other in the hallway of the same mortuary at the same time. Raft was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

Queen of the Night Clubs (1929) with Texas Guinan
Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929)
Side Street (1929) with Tom Moore, Owen Moore, and Matt Moore (Raft unbilled dancer)
Quick Millions (1931) with Spencer Tracy and Marguerite Churchill
Goldie (1931) with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow
Hush Money (1931) with Joan Bennett and Myrna Loy
Palmy Days (1931) with Eddie Cantor
Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak (Raft flips the nickel in his breakthrough role)
Love Is a Racket (1932) (scenes deleted)
Madame Racketeer (1932) with Alison Skipworth and Richard Bennett
Night World (1932) with Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, and Boris Karloff
Dancers in the Dark (1932) with Miriam Hopkins
Taxi! (1932) with James Cagney and Loretta Young
Winner Take All (1932) with James Cagney
Night After Night (1932) with Mae West as a fictionalized Texas Guinan (Raft's 1st leading role)
Under Cover Man (1932) with Nancy Carroll
If I Had a Million (1932; Raft plays a man on Death Row)
Pick-Up (1933) with Sylvia Sidney
The Bowery (1933) with Wallace Beery, Fay Wray, and Pert Kelton (Raft 2nd billed)
The Midnight Club (1933) with Clive Brook (Raft 2nd billed)
The Trumpet Blows (1934) with Adolphe Menjou
All of Me (1934) with Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins (Raft 3rd billed)
Bolero (1934) with Carole Lombard and Ray Milland (besides Scarface, Raft's signature film)
Limehouse Blues (1934) with Anna May Wong
Every Night at Eight (1935) with Alice Faye and Frances Langford
The Glass Key (1935) with Edward Arnold
She Couldn't Take It (1935) with Joan Bennett
Stolen Harmony (1935) with Lloyd Nolan and William Cagney
Rumba (1935) with Carole Lombard
Yours for the Asking (1936) with Dolores Costello and Ida Lupino
It Had to Happen (1936) with Rosalind Russell
Souls at Sea (1937) with Gary Cooper (Raft 2nd billed)
You and Me (1938) with Sylvia Sidney (with bizarre musical interludes by Kurt Weill)
Spawn of the North (1938) with Henry Fonda and John Barrymore
I Stole a Million (1939) with Claire Trevor
The Lady's from Kentucky (1939) with Ellen Drew
Each Dawn I Die (1939) with James Cagney (Raft 2nd billed)
The House Across the Bay (1940) with Joan Bennett
They Drive by Night (1940) with Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart
Invisible Stripes (1940) with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart
Manpower (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich (Raft 3rd billed but played the lead)
Broadway (1942) with Pat O'Brien and Broderick Crawford (Raft plays himself as a young B'way dancer)
Background to Danger (1943) with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre
Stage Door Canteen (1943) with an all-star cast
Follow the Boys (1944) with Vera Zorina
Nob Hill (1945) with Joan Bennett
Johnny Angel (1945) with Claire Trevor and Hoagy Carmichael
Whistle Stop (1946) with Ava Gardner and Victor McLaglen
Nocturne (1946) with Lynn Bari
Mr. Ace (1946) with Sylvia Sidney
Intrigue (1947) with June Havoc
Christmas Eve (1947) with George Brent, Randolph Scott, and Joan Blondell
Race Street (1948) with William Bendix and Marilyn Maxwell
A Dangerous Profession (1949)
Johnny Allegro (1949) with Nina Foch and Will Geer
Outpost in Morocco (1949) with Marie Windsor and Akim Tamiroff
We Shall Go to Paris (1949) aka Nous Irons a Paris (Raft cameo)
Red Light (1949) with Virginia Mayo, Gene Lockhart, and Raymond Burr
A Dangerous Profession (1949) with Ella Raines, Pat O'Brien, and Jim Backus
I'll Get You For This (1951; AKA "Lucky Nick Cain") with Coleen Gray
Loan Shark (1952) with Dorothy Hart
Dramma nella Kasbah (1953; AKA The Man from Cairo)
I'm the Law (1954; 3-episode TV series)
Black Widow (1954) with Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, and Gene Tierney (Raft 4th billed)
Rogue Cop (1954) with Robert Taylor and Janet Leigh (Raft 3rd billed)
A Bullet for Joey (1955) with Edward G. Robinson (Raft 2nd billed)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956) with David Niven and Marlene Dietrich (Raft cameo)
Jet Over the Atlantic (1959) with Guy Madison and Virginia Mayo (Raft 3rd billed)
Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon (Raft 4th billed)
Ocean's 11 (1960) with the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop)
The Ladies Man (1961) with Jerry Lewis (Raft cameo)
For Those Who Think Young (1964) (Raft cameo)
The Patsy (1964)
The Upper Hand (1966) with Jean Gabin (Raft 2nd billed)
Five Golden Dragons (1967) with Robert Cummings and Klaus Kinski
Casino Royale (1967) (Raft cameo)
Skidoo (1968) with Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx
Madigan's Millions (1968)
Hammersmith Is Out (1972) with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Peter Ustinov
Deadhead Miles (1972) (Raft cameo)
Sextette (1978) with Mae West and Timothy Dalton (Raft cameo)
The Man with Bogart's Face (1980)

Short Subjects:

Hollywood on Parade No. A-9 (1933)
Hollywood on Parade No. B-5 (1933)
Hollywood on Parade No. B-8 (1934)
The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935)
Screen Snapshots Series 18, No. 4 (1938)
Meet the Stars #6: Stars at Play (1941)
Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 2 (1941)
Hollywood Park (1946)
Screen Snapshots: Vacation at Del Mar (1949)

Roles Rejected

Raft turned down roles in the following films:^[16]^[17]

The Story of Temple Drake (1933)^[18] - replaced by Jack La Rue
Belle of the Nineties (1934) - replaced by Roger Pryor
The Princess Comes Across (1935) - replaced by Fred MacMurray
Dead End (1937) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
Stolen Heaven (1938) - replaced by Gene Raymond
The Magnificent Fraud (1939)^[19] - replaced by Lloyd Nolan
St Louis Blues (1939) - replaced by Lloyd Nolan
South of Suez (1940) - replaced by George Brent
City for Conquest (1940) - replaced by Anthony Quinn
It All Came True (1940) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
Blues in the Night (1941) - replaced by Richard Whorf
The Sea Wolf (1941) - replaced by John Garfield
High Sierra (1941) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
The Wagons Roll at Night (1941) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
Out of the Fog (1941) - replaced by John Garfield
The Maltese Falcon (1941) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
All Through the Night (1942) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
The Big Shot (1942) - replaced by Humphrey Bogart
Juke Girl (1942) - replaced by Ronald Reagan
Double Indemnity (1944) - replaced by Fred MacMurray
The Big Heat (1953) - replaced by Alexander Scourby
Morning Call (1957) - replaced by Ron Randell

Footnotes

^ ^a ^b United States Census 1910; Census Place: Manhattan Ward 12, New York, New York; Roll: T624_1025; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0668; Image: 1107; FHL Number: 1375038.
^ United States Census 1900; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: T623_1109; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 642.
^ via Associated Press, "'Tough guy' George raft dies of emphysema at 85", The Milwaukee Sentinel, November 25, 1980. Accessed August 10, 2009. "After growing up in New York's tough Hell's Kitchen area, Raft was a boxer, electrician and baseball player before landing a job as a dancer in nightclubs in the 1920s."
^ ^a ^b Beaver, Jim. George Raft. Films in Review, April, 1978.
^ Astaire, Fred, Steps in Time. ISBN 0-06-156756-6.
^ Beaver, Jim "George Raft", Films in Review, April, 1978.
^ Yablonsky, Lewis George Raft, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1974. ISBN 0-07-072235-8.
^ Parish, James Robert. The George Raft File: The Unauthorized Biography. New York: Drake Publishers, 1973. ISBN 0-87749-520-3.
^ Behlmer, Rudy Inside Warner Bros. (1913-1951), ISBN 0-671-63135-7.
^ http://cuban-exile.com/doc_276-300/doc0288.html
^ Wallace, Stone. George Raft: The Man Who Would Be Bogart. ISBN 1-59393-204-9.
^ Warren, Doug & Cagney, James (1986) [1983]. Cagney: The Authorized Biography (Mass Market ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 166. ISBN ISBN 0-312-90207-7.
^ Warren, Doug & Cagney, James (1986 [1983]). Cagney: The Authorized Biography (Mass Market ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 166. ISBN ISBN 0-312-90207-7.
^ Cagney, James (2005 [1976]). Cagney by Cagney. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-52026-3.
^ http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1967/mar/02/mr-george-raft
^ Everett Aaker, The Films of George Raft, McFarland & Company, 2013 p 184-188
^ A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax, Bogart, Pheonix 1998
^ PROJECTION JOTTINGS New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 19 Feb 1933: X5.
^ Joan Bennett Set for 'Man in Iron Mask': Brent Plays Minister Atwill in 'The Gorilla' New Television Plans New Raft Controversy Schallert, Edwin. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 20 Jan 1939: 10.

1900 United States Federal Census, Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll T623_1109; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 642.
1910; Census Place: Manhattan Ward 12, New York, New York; Roll T624_1025; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 668; Image: 1104
Ancestry.com. New York City Births, 1891-1902 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
New York City Grooms Index, http://www.italiangen.org/NYCmarriageresults.asp?kind=exact&Esurname=ranft&Efirst=&CertNbr=&StartYear=&EndYear=&B1=Submit.
New York City Birth Index, familysearch.org, https://beta.familysearch.org/s/recordDetails/show?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fpilot.familysearch.org%2Frecords%2Ftrk%3A%2Ffsrs%2Frr_655994601%2Fp1&hash=MPAfKvgWGXfZ5STyuqUCQxOVNk8%253D.
Social Security Death Index, Ancestry.com.